Rook sauntered over.
“If you’re expecting sappy stuff, I don’t do that,” he said, nonchalant.
“Keep telling yourself that, Inky, and maybe it’ll be true one day, but I know you better. I’ve heard your innermost thoughts, remember?”
Rook blinked at me. “Inky?” His face scrunched up.
“What!” I blurted. “You all have fun pet names for me. I can’t have one for you? I’m trying it out. Incubus… Inky…”
“Oh… Izzy… no, just don’t. NowKink,that would be a fun pet name for me.”
I sighed. Maybe it would be, but since I hadn’t come up with it, it lost its appeal. “Anyway, I know you have a soft side in addition to your…” I wiggled my brows and quirked my lips, “…hardside.”
“Innuendo you can do, stick with that,” he said as he drew close enough to pull me into a hug, his “hard side” crushed against me.
“You’ve felt a little… distant lately, since you came back from Urval,” I said pulling him close in a squeezing embrace of my own. My words were a little muffled talking into his shoulder. “Your body is with me and your mind is with me, but your heart…”
He sighed heavily. “It’s with you… and that’s the problem.”
I held him close and waited for him to elaborate.
“My mother,” he began, and it was the last thing I expected. I supposed sex demons did have mothers, like everyone else, but still, talking about his parents seemed odd for some reason. “She’s anti-love in a big way. We… argued… sort of. She loved my father more than she should have, and when he died…”
Ah.
“And you’re afraid I’m going to die?”
He didn’t say anything, but his tangled thoughts revealed the truth to me. It wasn’t so much me specifically dying, but death in general. If he died, I’d be sad and he didn’t want that for me. And if I died… well he’d seen what that had done to his mother.
“I’ll do my best to stay alive, if you promise to do the same. That’s… the best we can do.” I hugged him tighter. He grunted in pain. I remembered my elven strength and eased off a bit. I even drew back enough to look him in the eyes.
“I have one strong reason to stay alive, and it’s your orgasms. They’re second to none. What reason do you have?”
He quirked a half smile. “Another threesome with you and Myel. That was positively sinful.”
I smiled. “There, see? Keep that in mind, something to fight for. When the chips are down and things look bleak, think of me and Myel and fight to have another moment with us.”
“How is it you know exactly what to say to make me feel okay?” he whispered.
“Because I’m a kick-ass, intelligent, goddess of a woman, of course.”
“Yes… you are, aren’t you?” There was no hint of sarcasm or hyperbole in his voice, like there had been in mine.
“See?” I breathed. “There you go being sappy.” And I kissed him before he could argue or make some flippant comment.
I still maintain that kissing an incubus solved all of life’s problems. In the same way Myel’s presence comforted me, Rook’s devastatingly sinful kisses melted the world away until all that remained were lips and tongues in a delicious communion of the senses.
Rook pulled back and my lips followed his. I didn’t want it to end.
“If I didn’t stop us, we’d stay here kissing forever,” he breathed.
“Yeah…” I sighed the word. Would that really be so bad?
But… we had a war to fight.
Still that thought didn’t dim my spirits. “Another thing to live for,” I whispered.
“Hell, yeah,” he said softly, gave me a quick peck, one last squeeze of a hug, then he left.
